There’s also the issue of fluffy metrics, such as Facebook fans, number of
media interviews, media impressions and the dreaded advertising value
equivalents. Of course, there is something to be said for gauging certain
“vanity” PR metrics.

It’s difficult to measure brand awareness and the effectiveness of
traditional PR, so we must find ways to measure our efforts in ways that
are meaningful to the executives paying us.

Below are the types of activities you can measure by vanity (brand
awareness) and data-driven (business objectives) below. Start tracking
these metrics, and you’ll gain respect:

Vanity metric: media relations

Media relations doesn’t mean just working with journalists; it also entails
blogger and influencer relations.

Thanks to the web, we can track how many times an article, blog post or
piece of content was shared. You can figure out how many people saw it,
shared it and read it.

You must learn your way around Google Analytics. (That’s non-negotiable.) Track traffic, views and social media
sharing. Report to your executives the value each campaign generates.

Vanity metric: customer relations

There is a huge opportunity to build one-on-one relationships with
customers online.

Social media enables us to connect, engage and chat. In this case, fans,
friends, connections, followers and viewers make sense to track—when
combined with data-driven metrics that quantify meaningful interactions.

Vanity metric: scaleability

One issue Greg Galant raised for the industry is that PR can’t “scale.”
That was true in the old days—even just five years ago. Today, however, is
a different story.

PR pros are being tasked with
boosted posts,
promoted tweets and
Outbrain. In the past, those resources would have been considered “paid media,” so
they would have lived under the advertising roof. Today, PR pros are
increasingly spending time with these tools.

Facebook, Twitter and Outbrain all provide analytics to support your social
media purchases, so there’s no excuse not to track your efforts.

If you have strong command of all the data at your fingertips—and can
present it in a way that appeals to your paymasters—you’ll be able to
influence high-level decisions on product, market positioning and more.
Anyone can present gobs of numbers. Take time to extract the most
compelling stories, narratives and takeaways behind the data.

If you’re in a consumer business, this is less important to you, but in a
B2B organization, a sales cycle could be anywhere from two days to two
years.

Work with your sales team to figure out how long the average sale takes,
and set a goal to beat it. If it typically takes 10 months, set your goal
for nine months.

The best way to shorten a sales cycle is to create valuable, interesting
content that’s shared where your prospects hang out: email, social media,
stadiums, subways, websites and so on.

The better your content, the more likely your prospects are to read it. The
more likely they are to read it (or view it or listen to it), the more
likely they are to buy from you.

PR pros have ultimate control of this.

Data metric: improved margins

If you don’t work for a public-sector organization, I recommend staying
away from this one.

If you do, however, the easiest way to determine your effect on margins is
to track how much revenue you generated. Then subtract your budget, your
salary and your benefits (if you work for a PR firm, subtract your budget).

The resulting number is the revenue you’ll use for reporting. Have your
finance team help you figure out the margins from there. If you increased
revenue by more than what you spent, you can pretty much guarantee you
improved margins, too.

Data metric: increased revenue

If you don’t work for a public company, getting access to specific revenue
goals may prove difficult. If revenue goals are visible, figure out how you
can affect growth.

If you have e-commerce, your campaigns will drive traffic to landing pages
where people can buy. If you don’t sell online, your content, email, social
media and media relations can be measured through the leads you generate.
Analyze how you nurture leads, and measure how you help sales convert them.

Gain access to the customer relationship management program so you know exactly where each lead comes from, and whether they convert. You
must have access to the software the organization uses so you can track
your efforts. That’s how you determine how much money you’re driving for
the business.

Include PR metrics in everything

If you work in PR, you must learn new skills, such as how to incorporate PR
metrics into your work and how to present data in meaningful ways.

At some point, executives might abandon PR tactics and opt for more
measurable strategies. Don’t let that happen.

PR pros must learn how to take advantage of the web to track the real
activities that sustain a business. If you’d like to gain credibility, earn
respect and get a better seat at the table, focus on tracking more
substantive, meaningful metrics.